Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-10-06-Speech-3-053"
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"en.20101006.11.3-053"2
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"Madam President, Mr Chastel, Commissioner, the Gulf of Mexico incident is a watershed.
As the events taking place at this very moment in Hungary unfortunately demonstrate, Europe is clearly not safe from large-scale industrial accidents. Our joint task is precisely to anticipate disasters, not to simply wait for them to occur and then muster the resources to deal with them.
What do I mean by ‘anticipate’? Firstly, to have suitable, preventive legislation. No such legislation yet exists. We need to conduct sound preliminary studies, and I am pleased to hear about the plans to apply Seveso II to offshore platforms. We also need to carry out sound impact assessments and – this is extremely important – establish a liability system that acts as a deterrent, so that it is in operators’ economic interests to guarantee safety.
Finally, the technical resources must be in place to ensure that any eventuality can be dealt with within a few days or even hours. This does not mean simply being able to react on paper; it means being able to react in the real world. I dare not imagine what would happen if there were a situation similar to the one in the Gulf of Mexico in an enclosed sea such as the Mediterranean that lasted for several weeks or even months.
Of course, we also need – as you mentioned – a fair liability system to compensate damage. The Environmental Liability Directive, I recall, does not cover economic damage. That is why I think it is essential for us to do as the US had no hesitation in doing, and introduce a moratorium on new installations so that the conditions mentioned just now can be fulfilled.
This does not mean shutting down current operations, but suspending the issue of any new licences so as to ensure that all public and private stakeholders have the same objective: to establish, as quickly as possible, the legislation and technical resources to protect us from a disaster on the scale of the one in the US.
I think that all these actions would be a step in the right direction; although I would point out that our common goal is to gradually wean society off oil, not to ensure that we remain dependent on it."@en1
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